The Collective Threads
by Sandileina
Summary: So Niou’s bored, and hanging around in a hospital waiting room. Cue the crazy introspection!Signal lights, camera, action...


**Disclaimer: **Here's a random fact: Fruit, especially apples, can't buy you happiness. Here's another random fact: I don't own Prince of Tennis, or any of the characters. :)

**Rating: **PG

**Warnings: **Vaguely cracky humour, Niou's mind, Niou, occasional mild language. And shounen-ai fluff somewhere.

**Summary: **So Niou's bored, and hanging around in a hospital waiting room. Cue the crazy introspection! –Signals light, camera, action!-

**Author's notes:** Another Rikkai Drabblething. **You don't have to have read the ones that come before this, but it might help a bit. **The drabblething list goes:

**Times of Stress**

**Passing the Time**

**How to ask out Marui Bunta**

**Four Days Later**

**October Ice**

**Because I Love You**

**Evil**

**Further Nonsense**

**Dear Diary**

**Kind of… the same**

**100 Word Challenges**

**Driver in a Hurry, Child in a Coma**

**Doctor, doctor!**

**The Woes of Solomon Grundy**

**I'm Not Going**

**The Little Things**

**I Had To**

**He WHAT?!**

**Operation: Christmas Party**

**Being Fukubuchou**

**Once Upon a Time**

**My Brother Bunta**

**Dear Diary: Living with Niou-senpai**

**A Morning at the Pool**

**This is Love**

**SFRR**

**And So It Begins**

**Most Unexpected**

**This Is March 5th **

**No Small Wonder**

**The Last Day Of A Stage in Life**

**Back to Basics**

**Blame it On the Damn Vodka**

**Papercuts**

**The Stuff of Myths**

**Finally Understood**

**Dear Diary: Beginning the Third Year**

**Operation: Disbelief**

**May 21st **

**The Collective Threads**

Firstly, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, **Sarah/****Knoxvillej05**!!! n.n Sorry again for the delay. Hope you like it, and I'm totally flattered that you like my writing enough to request a birthday fic. :)

Secondly, a massive **THANK YOU** to all 20 people who reviewed 'May 21st'. You're all wonderful people with faces. n.n

Now, on with the fic! –Trumpet music-

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I guess it would be fair to say that I, the collective threads of warped thought processes and nicotine known as Niou Masaharu, don't tend to think too much about things like Life and Love. Because, yanno, it's pretty depressing if you really think about it. Although maybe that's just the cynicism talking. Maybe I could make this more interesting by separating this conversation into Cynic!'Haru and LingeringVestigesOfHopeAndLight!'Haru.

Or, ok, not. That would be pointless since the first one is all-powerful and the second one may or may not actually exist. Like Bigfoot, or caring politicians.

… Yes, yes, I'm talking to myself. At least I'm doing it inside my head instead of out loud. Can't blame me really; I'm bored as hell. In fact, I'm way more bored than that, because at least in hell you'd be occupied by the raging flames and screaming and so forth. Here there's literally nothing, _nothing_, to distract me from… well, myself. Hello, self. Nice day today.

Why am I here again…? Oh, right, yeah. Akaya's hip went a bit weird and I thought I'd better make a hospital appointment for him to get it, yanno, x-rayed. Might be his old injury from that car accident playing up again. He was only just getting his old speed back too…

Oh, don't look so surprised – I don't call him 'bratling' or 'the bratling' inside my head. Well, not unless he's being especially annoying. Which, come to think of it, is most of the time… Meh. Never mind. The point is I might be _slightly_ more fond of him than I let on. Still irritating that I have to make a goddamned _hospital appointment_ for him like his mum or something, but what can you do? It's not like my aunt and uncle would do it.

Anyway. Yeah, I'm sitting in the waiting room, bored out of my mind. Which isn't a good thing at all, as anyone who knows me will tell you. Except for Maru, who likes it when I'm bored because I can generally think of something fun for the two of us to do that may-or-may-not end up with a very pissed off fukubuchou. Aren't best friends fun? Even the ones that must, by now, have a thick coating of sugar around their vital organs and blood vessels.

Is that…? Oh, no, it's not. I though that might've been Choutarou passing by, but it's just some other tall guy with vaguely silvery hair.

It's natural, you know, that silver colour. It's amazing. I could say all sorts of incredibly over-romantic things about it, involving you know, twilight and stars and the sort. But that's really, really not my style. I find that kind of thing laughable. It just doesn't seem, well, _real_ to me. It's so much of a cliché that I really have to try not to laugh out loud when Marui and Akaya are being all lovey-dovey and Maru's going on about… what was it last time? Oh, yeah, he was going on about how he loved Akaya's eyes because they were so uniquely beautiful, and how no emerald or whatever could ever compare to them. Or maybe he was comparing them to emeralds – I was too busy not-laughing to listen properly.

Then again, I suppose I have a weird idea of romance. There was this incident yesterday, for instance. I was walking Choutarou home – we'd been to the cinema – and I was complaining about how flashy the fight scenes were, and how you'd Never Ever Ever _Ever_ turn your back to the opponent by spinning round (learnt that one the hard way when I consistantly chose to spin in a fight rather than jump half a step back and consistantly got my ass handed to me on a plate). And then just as we got to Choutarou's front gates, a couple of those enormous, slavering mutts that Choutarou insists are "sweet-natured, really" sprang up barking and pawing at the other side of the gates and gave me such a shock that I tripped and fell into a pile of leaves. I kid you not. Fate must have put them there _just_ for me, because hello, Autumn finished _eight months ago_, people!

So, obviously, I started swearing madly at them. Can't remember exactly what I said, but I'm willing to bet it was some of my more creative stuff that never fails to make fukubuchou flush like a lobster. And then, if that wasn't enough already, I was so flustered that I forgot about my 'no smoking in front of Choutarou' rule and got out a cigarette. Lit it up, took a drag, and then remembered where I was and who I was with and nearly died of embarrassed 'ohgodI'mlike,theepitomeofWrongandnowhe'sgoingtoatleastbescaredofmeifnottotallydisturbed'-ness.

But you know what? Choutarou just laughed. That light, malice-free laugh of his that kind of makes me tingle a bit when I hear it. And when he'd finished laughing he looked at me with this big smile on his face and said, "You're so flawed, 'Haru-san. I lo – er, I mean, it's wonderful."

That really got me. It really meant something, those four words. "You're so flawed, 'Haru-san." _Flawed_. The complete opposite of the classic 'Oh, InsertNameOfDoe-EyedLoverHere, you're so perfect in every way and I could never live without you, blah, blah.' It meant something because he said it with such odd sincerity and such a warm smile and because it's so obviously _true_. I am flawed. I am to perfect as Hiroshi is to drag queen. But the point is that _he doesn't care_. In fact, if anything, he prefers me that way. As I am. Me.

It's pretty obvious that he cut himself off at "I love you". I'd like to think it's because he's embarrassed about it, rather than he cut it off because he doesn't mean it. Lord Buddha, I really hope that's not the case.

A month or two ago I had a mad crush on him. A few weeks ago I was falling for him. Now…

I don't know. How am I supposed to know what love is? I guess it must be different for different people, because what Maru and Akaya call love means very little to me.

I kind of get the feeling that Choutarou doesn't want to say those three words until I do. And I don't want to say them until I think they're really true. Which, let's face it, might well be never.

The love they sing about in songs can't be real love, surely? Most of it's obsession, pure and simple. All that 'I can't stop thinking about you' and 'you are absolutely my whole entire life' and 'I followed you home because really, I'm secretly stalking you'.

… Ok, maybe not the last one (although I'm sure I've heard a song or two mentioning that kind of thing… come to think of it, those songs _were_ actually about obsession. Never mind). But the others, definitely. That's not love, unless the world's even more freakin' screwed-up than I think it is. Or maybe it is for some people.

I think I'm in love with Ohtori Choutarou. _But I can't be sure_. That's the agony of it. He's such a genuinely sweet guy that I'm actually frightened to say something like that to him only to realise that it's not true. Maybe that's my version of love? Wanting to protect someone so much that I'm actually careful about what I say and do around him. Wanting to be patient with the progression of our relationship despite the male teenage hormones running riot in my blood. Wanting so badly to see him smile at me and tell me things like "You're so flawed".

Oh, the results of the x-ray seem to be back.

… Mm, seems like everything's fine. The doctor's saying that Akaya's limp is probably just a result of the strain all the training and running and such causes to his growing joints. That's… good.

And I feel relieved. Why the hell do I feel relieved?

Oh, great, more "Nya ha, we controls you, so we does!" from my emotions. Bloody things.

"Can we _go_, now? I wanna go get some ice cream before the shop closes. Come on, Niou-senpai, let's go already!"

Yes, that's the voice of Akaya. Ice cream indeed… He does realise that he's turning fifteen this September, right? And that he's the buchou of the junior high tennis club? God, I don't envy the members of the club that have to listen to him. Poor idiots.

"I wouldn't mind some ice cream."

… And yes, that's the voice of the guy who was _just_ recently completely occupying my brain.

"Choutarou? What in hell are you doing here?"

"Oh, Yukimura-san said you were here. Good afternoon, Kirihara-kun."

"Yo, Silver-kun. Ha, now you have to treat us, Niou-senpai!"

"No, you don't have to treat me. I'll just tag along, if that's alright."

Eh, what the heck. "Nah, I'll buy. What kind of a boyfriend would I be if I didn't, hmm?"

"Uh oh, he winked at you! You'd better escape before he hides your crayons. OW!"

"You shut up, bratling."

"Ha-ha. Don't worry, Kirihara-kun, he does that a lot and I don't think he's hidden any of my… well, actually, I don't have any crayons, but he hasn't hidden anything else of mine."

"Really? Hmm. Oh, oh, that reminds me! You'd better get to the finals of the prefectural tournament, or else we won't get to play you and I really wanna beat that creepy whatshisface buchou of yours, so tell him, 'k?"

"Hiyoshi? Um, sure, I'll tell him."

"Good. Tell him that if he doesn't, I'll feed him to Trousers."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Ok bratling, time to shut up now and get ice cream."

"Ow, don't kick me! S'not my fault you've got weird naming sense."

"Who's Trousers?"

"Bratling, shut up!"

"The giant grasshopper that lives next to Mr. Wiggles. In a different cage thing, obviously, otherwise they might fight to the death. Like gladiators."

"… You have a grasshopper called Trousers?"

… And so it is that I, that the collective threads of embarrassment and bad temper known as Niou Masaharu, am so not buying the bratling ice cream.

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Sandy: Time it took me to write this fic except for the last page? A little over an hour and a half. Time it took me to write the last page? Forty minutes. Conclusion? I suck at writing endings. xDD

Anyways, I hoped you liked it! Please take the time to leave a review to make me feel loved. n.n And if you could quote your favourite bit from this or any other Drabblething in your review, that'd be absolutely fantasmically helpful and I'll love you.

Until next time (whenever that may be. –Kicks exams-)!


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